by Joy Dettman
Martin didn’t feel up to driving yet. Stella drove him around town, and occasionally out of town for funerals. She drove him to church, and afterwards, took him back to the house for lunch and a long visit with his Packard. He was up to tinkering with the spark plugs, and on his last visit, he had peered between the wheels at a new depression in the floor. He considered getting down on his knees to take a closer look, but he wasn’t quite up to that yet.
‘Something under there,’ he said. ‘You’ve moved it, Daughter?’
‘I said I’d start it up for you. It was going well before I left.’
‘The battery, no doubt.’ He cleaned the terminals, and again attempted to start the big motor, but the battery was dead. He thought to lift it out, to get Stella to take it over to Jennison’s and have it recharged, but it was a weight he could do without lifting. Perhaps later. Or perhaps the old car was due for a new battery. Maybe he’d get Jennison to bring a new one around. But in June the shed was cold and uninviting, and after fifteen minutes of tinkering there, he began to cough. He would have to put off playing mechanic until spring.
‘No good for a fine old vehicle to stand idle for this length of time. I’ll call Jennison around, let him get her going for me.’
‘Let other hands tinker with your beloved Packard, Father? What is the world coming to?’ Stella looked younger each day. She had put on a little of the weight lost while he was away, and looked better for it. And her outfits. He rarely saw her in the same shirt twice.
‘Is there no end to her abominable wardrobe, Daughter?’ he asked.
‘It appears not,’ she laughed.
‘And no end to your spending.’ He looked up at the new bathroom window, and he shook his head. ‘Perhaps I should consider selling the Packard. We may need it to pay some of your recent bills.’
‘We certainly will not sell it. Anyway, I’ve stopped spending for the moment, and when you move back, you will appreciate the upstairs bathroom. The shower recess is positively palatial.’
He had turned back to the car, and she looked where he was looking. From this angle she could see the cracked and sinking soil between the wheels of the car. She stooped, looked sideways and she saw the hump of the bike wheel again. Damn that wheel. There must be a root beneath it, pushing it up. She’d have to dig down, hacksaw it through. End it. Finally write ‘the end’, as she had written ‘THE END’ on her manuscript.
‘I think I’ll get you back to your nice warm flat, and if it will set your mind at rest, I’ll order a new battery from Jennison’s. Come now. It’s too cold out here for me, Father.’
But she didn’t order the battery from Jennison. She drove to Dorby and bought one, and she fitted it. The positive terminal was the larger of the two. As long as she put it back the same way as she took the old one out, it must be right.
And it was. The old motor purred, eager to go. She backed it out, but when she saw the sunken earth beneath it, and the protruding hump of bike wheel, she returned it to its place and ran for her telephone, ordering a truck-load of blue-metal screening from Steve Smith’s Gardening Supplies.
He arrived with his truck, late on the Saturday morning, dumping the load in her drive, directly in front of the garage. It locked the Packard in and the new car out, and although she shook her head adamantly when he offered to help move the pile, he stayed anyway, barrowing in the screenings, glancing around the shed.
‘Do you reckon we could push the old girl back?’
‘Leave it there, Steve. I’ll finish the spreading later.’
He was flinging the screening beneath the Packard’s wheels when he saw it. ‘What’s that?’ he said, on his knees, peering at the curve of the mutilated bike tyre.
The town clock struck its long and aching twelve. ‘Lord,’ she said. ‘Is that the time? Will you share a bite of lunch, Steve?’
‘You know me. I never say no to a free meal.’
‘Do you like baked beans? I seem to have a craving for them these days. Baked beans on toast?’
‘Sounds good.’
A Game of Chess
Doctor Parsons called at the unit in late July. He checked the minister’s lungs, took his blood pressure, and told him he was fitter than he ought to be for an old codger, then he sat at the dining room table, attempting to beat him at chess.
Stella found them there, still locked in battle, when she arrived at four to prepare her father’s evening meal. She made tea before setting to work in the kitchen.
‘New trousers now,’ Martin said. Stella was wearing stretch jeans, and a loose sweater. ‘You will have us in the poorhouse yet, Daughter.’ He turned to Parsons. ‘Did you see what she has done to the shed floor?’ He didn’t approve of the metal screenings, and a month on, he still made his disapproval clear at every meeting.
‘And as I continue to say, the floor was excessively low, and each year it appears to sink lower. It is constantly flooded by the hose – when you are in residence, Father, and as you are determined to come home, the screenings will at least keep you dry underfoot. We do not want you unwell again.’
‘Have you ordered the battery?’
‘Why cut up the drive with the Packard’s great wheels and weight? It’s bad enough at the moment. I’m thinking of having it done with bitumen.’
‘God save me from your spendthrift ways – ’
‘Play the game, you niggly old coot and stop your nagging,’ Parsons said. Stella laughed, and Parsons turned to her, a frown creasing his brow. ‘You’re looking well, Mousy Two.’
‘I’m very well, Doctor. The question is, is Father well enough to handle those stairs yet?’
‘He’s well enough to give me a run for my money, and though the old coot won’t admit it, he has no desire to return to his stairs. He loves this place. And so would I.’
‘It has its good points and its bad. Still it is not home,’ the minister stressed.
‘I’ve attempted to talk him into remaining here, but to no avail. I really have no desire to sell the flat, so you can move in if Father ever decides to give up his central heating.’
The doctor’s attention on Stella, he absent-mindedly moved his castle and Martin pounced, stealing his queen.
‘Checkmate.’
‘Life happens. You bring your daughter in to dazzle me at a ticklish moment in the game, then take advantage of my wandering attention. You do look quite dazzling, Mousy Two. What have you been doing to yourself lately?’
‘My continued absence from home is encouraging her into many habits,’ Martin replied, looking meaningfully at Stella’s jeans. Her short hair was near gold again, having been somehow transformed by chemicals she bought from the supermarket.
‘I’d better be off,’ Parsons said. ‘Don’t you get up. Your daughter will see me safely off the premises. You’ve got nothing worth stealing here anyway.’
Stella walked out with the doctor, and he ushered her through the front door, then closed it behind him, locking them outside.
‘A word, Mousy Two.’
‘Yes.’
Parsons was never a one to beat around the bush. ‘I’m one of the old school, lass. I can pick a pregnant woman at fifty paces,’ he said.
The blush began at her brow, working its slow way down. She turned away to hide it, pushed at the front door. ‘Father. Father. I’ve locked myself out.’
The doctor caught her hand. ‘What age are you now?’
‘You, of all people, know my age, Doctor Parsons.’ She knocked at the front door. ‘Father. Father!’
‘That I do. Nineteen-bloody-fifty-two. The worst day of my life. You don’t intend going ahead with it, do you?’
‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’ Again she knocked on the door. She hammered on it. ‘Father. Will you open this door please?’
‘I’m talking about a woman of forty-four having a baby, lass – in five months or so.’
‘Father!’
‘Tight jeans, large tops. I’ve seen girls trying
to pull that same stunt for years. They say your mother tried to pull it too.’
She turned on him, angry now. Her head, her face hot, on a day too cold. ‘I am not my mother. I . . . am . . . not . . . my . . . mother.’
‘No, and that’s a fact.’ He rubbed at his mouth with his free hand. ‘Have you considered abortion?’
‘Please release my hand. I want to go inside.’
‘No use running from me, lass. Who’s the culprit? Young Steve?’
‘How dare you.’
‘Oh, I dare a lot. Or have you been making a few withdrawals from some sperm bank – while you were up in Sydney?’
‘I am not in the mood for your humour, Doctor Parsons. Father’s dinner is burning. Release my hand.’
‘He doesn’t know about it.’
‘There is nothing he needs to know.’
‘This is no place to talk, lass. Come down to the surgery on Monday.’
‘I don’t need – ’
‘You need all right, Mousy Two. Have you got any idea of the problems associated with a first pregnancy at your age? Come in at eight, before the old biddies get there. I’ll leave the door open. I’ve got some literature you ought to take a look at. At least read it before you go making some crazy decision you might regret for the rest of your life. Who did the deed?’
She ignored him.
‘Denying it won’t make it go away, lass.’
‘Leave . . . me . . . alone.’ She tugged her hand free and pushed through the shrubs to the lounge room window, where she rapped with her knuckles on glass. ‘Father. Can you hear me?’
Parsons tracked her. ‘Nice place. The grand old dame kept this garden up until the day she died. I always envied her this unit. Wouldn’t mind calling it home,’ he said.
‘Father.’ Again she rapped on the window. ‘Father.’
Heads were peering from other doors now, faces from behind lifted curtains.
‘She was raped the night she died,’ Parsons said.
‘And may he rot in hell for all eter – ’ She caught her tongue, but too late. Now she covered her mouth. Her eyes widened, her mouth was open, gasping air between her fingers, trying to take back the spoken words. But the little doctor had all he needed. He nodded, smiled, and she turned away, blood again flooding her cheeks, her brow, her head. She swayed on her feet, stumbled, then grasped the brick wall. For months she’d been so careful. How could she? How could she have been such a fool?
The back door opened.
‘Daughter?’
‘The wind. The front door. I locked myself out, Father.’ She tried to move away from the window, but the doctor now held her upper arm. For a small man, his grip was strong. Keeping his voice low, he said: ‘Me and Johnson covered it up. I mean, a flighty old girl like her might have had a lover. That’s the way she would have wanted it, we reckoned. Johnson swore she’d come back and haunt us if we’d let her become town gossip.’
Stella was listening now, loving Sergeant Johnson – loving this little man, but hating him too. Her tears were starting, and he took advantage of her tears.
‘Johnson hasn’t given up though. He knows we’ve got a rapist in town. Someone the old lady knew well, someone she opened her door to. Someone who left better than his fingerprints in his sperm, lass. He raped you too, didn’t he? That’s what you’re carrying. Who is he?’
She pushed him from her and ran to the door, and she ran inside, pushing past Martin, leaving him at the door with Parsons.
It was over. It was over. There was a fifteen-centimetre layer of blue-metal screenings on the shed floor – levelling the shed floor. She had put it behind her, and she would not allow Parsons to start it up again.
On the Scent of a Decomposing Bone
The doctor rode around to the Templeton house that evening. The Packard was in the drive and he could hear sawing coming from the shed. He crept to the closed door and stood listening, then he crept around to the small window and climbed to the fork of the overgrown apricot tree. It was high enough for him to see inside the shed where Stella was squatting, sawing at something deep in the earth. Sawing through metal, with a hacksaw.
He watched her for minutes. He watched her until a small piece of curved metal came free. He watched her stand, her face pleased with her labour.
Only then did he rap on the window. ‘Digging for gold, Mousy Two?’ he asked.
She spun around, looked up and saw his face amid the bare branches, then she dropped the piece of bike wheel to the floor, and with her shoe kicked a heap of screening back, burying the metal, and what she had cut the metal from. By the time Parsons crawled down from his perch, and untangled his beard from a twig, the door was open and she was in the Packard, moving it back to its rightful place.
He stood at the driver’s side, preventing her escape. ‘I thought the old girl had cracked up,’ he said, fingering a scratch on his face.
‘It needed a new battery, so I bought one.’
The old battery was on the bench, ready to be put back into place when she was done. He saw it. He saw much. A bike man from way back, he knew a piece of wheel when he saw it too, and he was pretty certain what bike it was she’d been cutting into.
She slid across the seat, opened the opposite door, and hurried to the storeroom where she began tidying the bags of knitting wool, sorting through them, matching colours. He followed her and stood watching.
‘As I was saying today, we got a sample of the rapist’s sperm, lass. Thought you might like to know. I got his blood group from it. Got my own idea of who it was. I reckon I’ve solved a couple of mysteries here today.’ There was no reply, no sign that she had heard him. ‘I’ve had my own opinion of what might have happened to our rapist, lass. I reckoned someone with a daughter might have a fair idea of what happened to him.’
A breath drawn slowly, held, she worked on, her head low.
‘Now, my money was on the Murphys,’ he said. ‘On Spud, young Kelly’s old man. Only trouble is, those who threaten murder, rarely do it. Spud would have thrashed him within an inch of his life, fixed him so his voice went a few octaves higher. But murder. That’s not the Murphys’ style. Murder is usually a hot-blooded thing. A lot of people might threaten to do it, but we usually have to be pushed into a corner before we kill.’
Still she made no reply, but her hands were shaking out of control, her stomach, her mind, her heart was shaking.
‘Young Spencer came by your place, didn’t he, lass?’
‘Leave me alone. Go away and leave me alone.’
‘You’re pregnant. I’d say, fourteen, fifteen weeks. Not a day less.’
‘You’re wrong. It is less. It’s much less. I . . . I met a traveller at the motel in Sydney. I told Father about him when he was in hospital. An American tourist. His name was Wayne. Wayne Lee.’
‘Taking a page out of the old lady’s book now with your mysterious lovers. He wasn’t a relative of John Wayne by any chance, was he? I know him well.’
‘Ask Father if you don’t believe me.’
‘Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And pigs might fly, Mousy Two, but in Maidenville they rarely do. Did young Spencer call on you?’
She turned away, spilling the wool to the floor. ‘Damn you,’ she said, attempting to pick up the scattered wool, but dropping more. ‘Damn you.’
He squatted by her side, gathering up the colourful balls, dusting them on the leg of his baggy shorts, before handing them back to her to place into their bags.
‘I’ve been doing my arithmetic. Miss Moreland has been dead for close on four months, and young Thomas Spencer, missing since four days after her funeral, and my interfering eye says you were impregnated around the time he took off. Now that’s an equation Johnson could have a lot of fun with, I reckon. Add to that young Spencer’s blood group, which I happen to have on record. The sperm fits, lass, and when you pop his infant, I can get some of its blood, check his DNA. I’m God in this town.’
She flung the bag of wool to the floor,
kicked it at the wall. ‘Damn you. Damn your God, and damn the wool, and damn this bloody-minded town, and damn your probing doctor’s eyes, and damn your interference. Damn you!’ And she walked to the Packard, where she stood, her head against its cold metal.
He stood behind her, a hand on her shoulder. ‘They don’t make them like they used to, do they?’ he said. ‘A little bloke like me could set up house on the back seat of this old girl.’
‘Nothing is like it used to be,’ she said. ‘Nothing. I am not like I used to be.’ She turned to him then, her eyes holding his. ‘I rarely look to the past, Doctor. As you no doubt remember, I learned early to put each day behind me and to never look behind. I look ahead to each dawn, to a better dawn, and that is what I am trying to do now.’
‘And what about that future dawn, lass? What about tomorrow?’
‘Tell me – you tell me, Doctor Parsons, does my only chance of a tomorrow, of going forward into tomorrow, of leaving some small part of me, of Father, to the future, does it deserve to be gouged from me and flushed down some sewer?’
‘Where is he, lass?’
She pointed with the toe of her shoe to the earth beneath the Packard.
‘Life happens,’ he said, dropping to his knees, half expecting to see a corpse in a body bag tied under the chassis. ‘Where?’
‘With the bike. I . . . I dug a . . . a shallow pit.’
‘Shit happens, lass. And when it does, sometimes the best thing you can do with it, is to bury it. How shallow is shallow?’
‘Very,’ she replied, eyeing him defiantly. ‘Far too shallow.’
He stood, took a handkerchief from his pocket, and he wiped the handkerchief across her cheek.
‘What?’ Her hand went to the place he had touched.
‘You’ve got butter all over your whiskers, Mousy Two,’ he said.
Differing Versions